Important Notes:

The first time you launch Daz Studio 4.9, any data that exists in the content database is migrated so that it can be used in Daz Studio 4.9.

The amount of time the database migration operation takes is proportional to the amount of data to be migrated.

The database migration operation does not delete the data that it migrates from the previous location so that it remains accessible by earlier versions and other applications, such as Carrara.

Daz Studio 4.9 uses the same PostgreSQL database as Daz Studio 4.6 and later, and/or other applications, such as Carrara.

A portion of the data contained within the database is shared amongst versions but not entirely. For example:

Creating a category in either Daz Studio 4.9 or 4.8 will cause that category to exist in the other version

Assigning a file to that category in Daz Studio 4.9 will NOT cause that file to be assigned to that category in Daz Studio 4.8

Assigning a file to that category in Daz Studio 4.8 WILL cause the file to be assigned to the category in Daz Studio 4.9

Reseting the database in any version of Daz Studio that uses PostgreSQL (4.6 or later) will purge all of data in the database, including any data that may be used by earlier versions or other applications, such as Carrara.

After the initial migration operation, edited metadata in Daz Studio 4.8 will not be migrated to Daz Studio 4.9.

A workaround is to export User Data from Daz Studio 4.8 and reimport User Data in Daz Studio 4.9.

*Fixed in the 4.9.0.24 build*Importing non-User Data from DSX files does NOT function correctly in the 4.9.0.21 build and is, therefore, NOT recommended—this is fixed in a subsequent build.

A workaround is to reimport metadata within Daz Studio 4.8 or Daz Install Manager.

Importing User Data that has been previously exported to DSX file(s) DOES function correctly in 4.9.0.21.

NVIDIA Iray related

Fixes made to the implementation of Sub Surface Scattering (SSS) in the NVIDIA Iray renderer affect materials which have "Translucency Weight" active—not set to 0. This manifests in skin tones appearing more blue than they do in 4.8. A quick adjustment that can be made during the BETA phase is to adjust the "SSS Reflectance Tint" from a light blue to a light yellow—R: 1.00, G: 0.88, B: 0.67. Adjust this value to your liking.

After the BETA phase, Daz 3D products will be updated to include this change.

Previous Threads:

Comments

What is new in Daz Studio 4.9? Do I need to update my copy?

Daz Studio 4.9 resolves many issues and implements many improvements since the 4.8.0.59 General Release. More detail on specific fixes/changes/improvements can be found in the Change Log, which can be viewed online within the Documentation Center portion of our site. All new downloads of the Daz Studio Pro BETA product (SKU: 12000) will be of this version.

*Changes since the last build are marked in red*

Smart Content pane (and other smart content views)

Filter By Context option

While enabled, filtering occurs based on what is selected [or not] in the scene, the content type assigned to a given asset, the category that is currently selected and the keyword(s) that are entered into the filter field.

When disabled, filtering occurs based on the category that is currently selected and the keyword(s) that are entered into the filter field.

Files page:

Easily explore the product an asset is in

Select "Explore Product..." from the context menu of any asset

Explore the LOCAL_USER "product"

Consists of files that do not have metadata to indicate that they belong to a particular product

Right-click an asset you've created, or which was not installed with metadata, and choose "Explore User Assets..."

Easily explore related assets

Redesigned Associated Asset Views

Navigate and filter the contents of a product the same way you navaigate and/or filter products and assets

Context menu > "Explore Add-Ons..."

Context menu > "Explore Targets..."

Products page:

View products in your account that are "available via Daz Connect"

All - All products, regardless of installed state

Installed - All products that are installed (not limited to only those installed via Daz Connect)

Available - All products that are NOT currently installed, but are available via Daz Connect

Updates - Products that were installed via Daz Connect and have an update available

Pending - Products that are currently in the queue for a Daz Connect install operation; install, update, uninstall

Double-click the product icon to explore the product, then click the product icon in the product view

Easily explore the contents of product

Redesigned Product View

Navigate and filter the contents of a product the same way you navaigate and/or filter products and assets

Single click access to the online ReadMe

Double-click

Context menu > "Explore Product..."

Explore the LOCAL_USER "product"

Consists of files that do not have metadata to indicate that they belong to a particular product

Sync Pages

Synchronizes the selected category between the Files and Products pages

Falls back to the first common ancestor if the category path is missing from the opposite page

Synchronizes the filter field value between the Files and Products pages

Syncronizes the state of the "Filter By Context" option

Information Panel

Store page

Browse products you don't already own

Filtered based on which object in the scene you currently have selected and which category you're currently navigated to

Info page

Selected asset Info

Selected product Info

Tags page

Clickable Tags—easy keyword filtering

Content Library pane

Products

Lists all products in your account that are available via Daz Connect

Product icons

Color = Installed

Grayscale = Available via Daz Connect, but not installed

Tooltip

Large color image for products available via Daz Connect

Install products in your account that are available via Daz Connect

Select, then double-click "Install <Product_Name>" icon

Context menu > "Install"

Update products in your account that were installed via Daz Connect

Context menu > "Install Update"

Uninstall products that were installed via Daz Connect

Context menu > "Uninstall"

Quick access to online ReadMe

Context menu > "More Information..."

Categories

Lost and Found

NVIDIA Iray 2015.3.2

Fixes made to the implementation of Sub Surface Scattering (SSS) in the NVIDIA Iray renderer affect materials which have "Translucency Weight" active—not set to 0. This manifests in skin tones appearing more blue than they do in 4.8. A quick adjustment that can be made during the BETA phase is to adjust the "SSS Reflectance Tint" from a light blue to a light yellow—R: 1.00, G: 0.88, B: 0.67. Adjust this value to your liking.

After the BETA phase, Daz 3D products will be updated to include this change.

Has the NVIDIA Iray renderer been updated?

Yes, it has.

Iray 2015.3.2, build 246000.4498

Added and Changed Features

General

Tailored error number reporting during .mi import has been enabled. Each error now gets a speciﬁc error number assigned. Currently, only .mi syntax errors get reported with error number 4001, other .mi parser internal errors with 4002 and all others are defaulting to 4000. This will be extended in the future.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

As a performance optimization, MDL jit-compilation for simple color math is now avoided for Iray Photoreal and Iray Interactive.

Fixed Bugs

.mi exporter

MDL parameters of array type are now properly exported including their dependencies.

The MDL module name "<builtins>" will not be listed in the list of MDL includes.

A bug in the export of parametric approximations has been ﬁxed.

Iray Photoreal

Convergence issues with the caustic sampler enabled have been ﬁxed.

A memory corruption when running out of device memory while uploading scene data has been ﬁxed.

Various issues have been ﬁxed that would show when disabling emissive geometry or moving emissive geometry around while other emissive geometry was disabled.

The incorrect orientation swaps for MDL emission (with EDFs that have global "global distribution" set) in case the transform changes the handedness of the light source's object space has been ﬁxed.

Picking in case "mip lens focus" is 0.0 and "mip lens radius" is not 0.0 has been ﬁxed.

Iray Bridge

A client side memory leak when rendering using Iray Bridge and loading multiple scenes in succession has been ﬁxed.

A threading issue has been ﬁxed where Iray Bridge could assign the same session ID to multiple sessions under certain circumstances. This could lead to weird errors if multiple sessions with the same ID were connected to the same Bridge server.

A bug has been ﬁxed where sending very large frames, for instance high resolution PNG, would trigger a warning that the channel send buffer soft limit was exceeded. This had no negative impact and is part of normal operation so this warning has been removed.

Wrong timing for the "canvas update" progress message when rendering with one of the cloud render modes has been ﬁxed. Now this progress message will be issued just after the frame has been written to the canvas.

A problem occurred when the render termination criteria was reached for the cloud render modes. In this case the next call to render() would always return 1 (render criteria reached) even if the scene was changed. This has been ﬁxed.

A bug, where the client log would warn about having to pause the video stream for 0.0 seconds because of video congestion, has been ﬁxed. Iray Bridge will now only warn if the congestion was long enough to affect the framerate noticeably.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

The MDL inliner got confused in some rare cases when the result of an inlined function was used as an argument to the same function, i.e. f(f(), g()) and f was inlined. This has been ﬁxed.

Rendering a scene over Iray Bridge would occasionally fail with a missing operator*(color,ﬂoat). This has been ﬁxed.

Reading of uniform int and resource parameters if the parameter was a uniform function call and not a literal when a MDL material was instantiated has been ﬁxed.

Using the select operator inside the body of a MDL material would sometimes lead to a crash. This has been ﬁxed.

The .cb importer now accepts the string option "cache override" which will override the cache location speciﬁed in the .cb ﬁle.

The structure type name used in the method IQueue manager connection::submit job() has been renamed from "Name and pixel type" to "Canvas type" and the ﬁeld "output name" has been added. The ﬁelds in the structure type "Snapshot data" have been renamed from "name" and "ﬁle name" to "snapshot name" and "result name", respectively. See the documentation for details.

Fixed Bugs

Iray Photoreal

Fixed at bug in light sampling using uninitialized memory if a MDL material has both front and backside explicitly set but only the front is emitting.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

Fixed handling of MDL 1.0 usage of spot edf(): The default value of the spread parameter is now π, not 2π as it was before.

Fixed crashes when uniform functions are added to some uniform parameters of various ::base functions.

Iray Bridge video will now fall back on using the software h264 encoder (if available) if the hardware encoder fails to encode, for instance because the resolution is too high. Previously, the software encoder fallback would only work if the hardware encoder was not loaded or failed to initialize because there were no suitable GPUs available.

Proper GPU detection support for vGPUs has been added. vGPUs are now correctly handled by Iray's device detection which prior to this change ignored all GPUs of PCI bus type.

The structure type name used in the method IQueue manager connection::submit job() has been renamed from "Name and pixel type" to "Canvas type" and the ﬁeld "output name" has been added. The ﬁelds in the structure type "Snapshot data" have been renamed from "name" and "ﬁle name" to "snapshot name" and "result name", respectively. See the documentation for details.

Iray Photoreal

Support for light emitting geometry to the material id and generated material id render target canvases has been added.

The memory page in the HTTP admin server has been improved. All devices in the system are listed together with their status. Memory is listed in human-readable form.

The output of the generated material id canvas has been changed to contain values that match the input data rather than synthesized data, leading to slightly more stable output in animations. However, note that users who require stable values should always use the material id canvas together with explicitly assigned material IDs.

Iray Interactive

Support for per-object settings for shadow terminator compensation has been added.

Glossy reﬂections on the virtual ground plane are now disabled in network rendering.

Virtual ground plane shadows are not ﬁltered in network rendering.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

Support for texture resources with non-const gamma mode has been added.

Fixed Bugs

General

A bug has been ﬁxed that could block the Iray Bridge Server system thread for a long time during session shutdown if a scene contained a very large number of elements. This could cause a new connection attempt, while the previous session was cleaning up, to time out and fail.

Rendering aborts on Iray Bridge Server that could occur non-deterministically when parameters of an MDL material were changed in some materials have been ﬁxed.

.mi Exporter

The export of rectangle lights resulted in incorrect orientation of the light. This has been ﬁxed.

An issue in the export of the approximate attribute on instances has been ﬁxed.

Exporting parametric approximation settings now works for all supported types.

A new licensing scheme has been added. Most notably, without any license, neuray will not start anymore, while current licenses continue to work without any change.

In Iray Bridge, per element logging when importing .cb ﬁles is now set to the highest verbosity.

OptiX Prime has been updated to version 3.8.1. It primarily resolves hierarchy construction problems for some scenes.

Due to the OptiX Prime update, Iray now requires a CUDA 7.0 compatible driver if using CUDA accelerated rendering.

Iray now logs information about its identity, version, build date and platform at startup of the library.

The shutdown of Iray when all hosts in a cluster stop at the same time has been sped up.

Rendering speed when doing multi-hosted rendering with many hosts has been improved.

It's now possible for a WebSocket client (e.g. Iray Viewer) to connect to a WebSocket server (e.g. VCA or Bridge Server) via an HTTP proxy. To do this, IGeneral conﬁguration::set http proxy address can be called to specify the HTTP proxy address. If the HTTP proxy requires authentication, IGeneral conﬁg::set http proxy authentication should be called to set the username/password. Currently, basic and digest authentication schemes are supported.

The Iray admin page now contains all CUDA devices in the system, not just the ones currently used for rendering. A new label indicates the status of the device.

Support for exporting memory-based MDL modules has been added. The .mi exporter now triggers the export of memory-based MDL modules.

A warning about 'select' elements has been added to the .mi importer. Whenever a 'select' scene element is found, the .mi importer warns that this type is no longer supported and ignores it.

I/O and scene handling support for new 'matte shadow intensity' attribute has been added. You can, for instance, now specify in .mi

attribute scalar "matte shadow intensity" 1.23

.mi language support for materials at scene elements of group type has been added. The .mi language has been enhanced such that an instance group, similar to instances, can have materials. This removes an incompatibility between the API and the .mi language, where the former supported that feature already.

Iray Photoreal

The performance for scenes with cutout has been improved.

QMC sampling has been improved. It is now less prone to temporal artifacts and shows less patterns in difﬁcult scenes if the caustic sampler is used.

matte shadow intensity has been added as a new attribute. It has the same effect as the already existing ground plane shadow darkening factor, but has been extended to work on all matte objects in general.

shadow terminator offset has been added as a new attribute. It is a workaround for the classic shadow terminator problem on low tessellation geometry. Note that it is not recommended to always enable this, as it can lead to new artifacts in corners or if other geometry is nearby.

iray shadow terminator offset has been added as an attribute in the scene options to globally disable the above attribute.

The randomness of Worley noise mode 2 has been improved.

The convergence rate for some difﬁcult lighting setups has been improved.

Instance transform updates have been sped up.

Iray Interactive

Instancing support has been added.

Glossy reﬂections on the virtual ground plane have been added. Please note that the shadow buffer does not contain glossy reﬂections of shadow computations on the virtual ground plane.

The iteration speed has been improved by 50% when using irt indirect light mode==2.

Support for shadow terminator correction using iray shadow terminator offset has been added.

The maximum ray depth has been increased from 16 to 64.

The Iray Interactive instancing render option has been changed to iray instancing, so it's shared with

Iray Photoreal now.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

JIT compilation for systems with several equal GPUs is now done per GPU class, not per GPU device anymore.

The interface mi::neuraylib::IBackend to access the MDL JIT backend from the MDL SDK has been added. Users of the MDL SDK can now compile parts of MDL material instances into LL VM-IR or PTX code.

The creation of MDL modules with forbidden module names will now be rejected. Such modules cannot be imported into MDL either.

The MDL exporter has been signiﬁcantly improved. As a consequence, the export of MDL modules is no longer limited to presets, but is now also possible for MDL modules that were imported from ﬁle or via string. Resources in such modules are also handled correctly.

Fixed Bugs

General

A crash has been ﬁxed that was seen in some cases when doing multi-hosted rendering with many hosts.

A crash in geometry attribute retrieval has been ﬁxed. When creating an empty mesh (i.e., no vertices) but creating a texture mesh attribute nevertheless, internal accesses of the mesh led to a crash. This has been ﬁxed.

​Iray Photoreal

The compatibility of base::gradient3 with the Iray builtin has been ﬁxed.

Wrong gamma conversion for RGB(A) textures reduced to a single channel via the average operator has been ﬁxed.

Several memory leaks have been ﬁxed.

A deadlock seen with a low cpu limit has been ﬁxed.

Crashes in Iray Photoreal after a device runs out of memory has been ﬁxed.

Matte shadows in scenes with both emitting geometry and ﬁnite light sources have been ﬁxed.

A crash when rendering only alpha with the architectural sampler has been ﬁxed.

The .mi export of ITriangle mesh has been updated. Due to the deprecation of per-point and per-vertex attributes on the triangle mesh, exporting a triangle mesh could have led to numerous warnings. The .mi exporter is now using a more general way of retrieving the attribute values.

Note that the debug option "use rdma" has been removed in a previous release. There is an ofﬁcial option in the INetwork conﬁguration API component, now.

Fixed Bugs

General

Path handling of light proﬁles in .mi ﬁles has been ﬁxed. When trying to locate light proﬁles given with relative paths, the current working directory was sometimes not taken into account.

A crash when updating decals has been ﬁxed. For instance, when updating a decal by removing and re-adding it in one step, the internal scene update sometimes kept two copies of it around, which ﬁnally could have led to a crash.

The initialization order of internal libraries has been ﬁxed. Before starting neuray, some libraries were already started. This led to problems when trying to customize their behavior, e.g. providing a custom logging facility.

Network rendering problems seen with some scenes with huge instance groups have been ﬁxed.

Iray Photoreal

Textured emission material changes on other objects' materials could lead to an invalid texture reference, causing the wrong texture to be used for emission or, in the worst case, a crash. This has been ﬁxed.

If parts (but not all) of a MDL function were supported by builtin procedurals this could lead to undeﬁned results. This has been ﬁxed.

An alpha issue for the caustic sampler has been ﬁxed.

Potential CUDA out of memory problems if a render call and a ray tracing hierarchy build happen at the same time have been ﬁxed.

Timeout handling has been improved. Sample data loss for the mega kernel in case of timeouts is now avoided.

Iray Interactive

A bug causing cutout opacity to be ignored when the opacity wasn't deﬁned by a texture has been ﬁxed.

A bug causing a crash when preprocessing environments on the GPU using a GeForce Titan X has been ﬁxed.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

Some indeterminism in the MDL serialization has been ﬁxed, which caused unnecessary data uploads to the VCA when rendering.

Unused textures in JIT compiled code are no longer referenced. This ﬁxes a crash in rendering scenes after a texture in a material was changed in Iray Interactive.

The handling of JITed materials has been ﬁxed: JIT compilation of MDL expressions that got compiled into zeros/random numbers under some conditions has been ﬁxed.

The compilation of MDL material presets that do not override all parameter defaults has been ﬁxed. Previously, using such a preset could cause the VCA to abort the rendering (lost connection).

The Queue Manager API to manage render jobs has been added for the future use with Iray Server.

The Bridge API interface method IIray bridge server::delete snapshot(const char* snapshot path) has been added. This method can be called by the bridge server to remove a .cb scene snapshot ﬁle and release the corresponding cached data.

The .mi importer now checks for invalid light settings during .mi import. When it ﬁnds a directional light with area settings, the area settings will now be ignored.

A proper implementation for verbatim texture I/O in the .mi format has been added. All supported formats are now implemented. Verbatim textures of "vector texture" type are not supported by the .mi exporter anymore. For backwards compatibility, the .mi importer will still handle verbatim textures of that type which were incorrectly exported.

The .mi exporter now handles stand-alone decal materials, i.e. those that are not in a material array. Prior to this, stand-alone decal materials were ignored during the .mi export.

Access to per-point or per-vertex attributes from the triangle mesh itself has been deprecated. Using this deprecated feature will not result in a compile-time error, but generates a warning at runtime (since the methods are still used for per-primitive attributes). Please use the corresponding connectivity instead (as it is already done for polygon meshes and subdivision surfaces).

A ﬂag has been added to INode manager client::join or create cluster which marks the cluster that is being created as 'reusable'. With a reusable cluster, the worker program may be shut down and a different worker program may be started.

If worker reservations have to be unrolled for some reason, there's now a check for workers that may have dropped out of the netgroup in the meantime.

Logging during cluster creation has been improved to make the decisions taken by the node manager more transparent.

A new callback, IShutdown cluster callback, has been added that can be registered with IN-ode manager client. It will be called whenever a request to shutdown a cluster is received within the netgroup.

Iray Photoreal

The precision for all builtin noise functions has been improved, especially visible in bumps derived from noise.

dome ground legacy reflection reenables the now deprecated way of doing limited ground reﬂections (no reﬂection of the ground in other reﬂections), default: off.

Emission in Iray Photoreal now respects the shading normal of the emitting object / light source.

Emitting objects now have MDL programmability support for the material emission slot "intensity".

The implementation of procedural bump maps has been improved for world and object space coordinates resulting in no more seams and higher performance.

The robustness of nested volume rendering has been improved.

Support for camera and/or light sources in volumes has been added.

Iray Interactive

Iray Interactive has been sped up in cases where the jitted code of all scene materials has not changed.

The convergence of environment sampling has been improved.

Support of ﬁreﬂy ﬁltering parameters iray ﬁreﬂy ﬁlter and iray nominal luminance has been added.

Glossy transmission has been implemented.

Material Definition Language (MDL)

The MDL compiler now supports inlining of function calls at material instantiation time. This reduces the need for JIT compilation in many places, especially inside the core deﬁnitions package.

The MDL compiler does not inline material instances inside default parameters anymore. This allows better inspection of material parameter defaults because other material instances are still visible here.

Calls of base::tangent space normal texture() and base::ﬁle texture() can now always be JIT compiled. The previous restrictions have been removed.

The MDL core compiler detects C-style now and produces a meaningful error (they are now allowed in MDL).

The MDL core compiler now issues an error if an extra type qualiﬁer is used on a MDL constant declaration.

Fixed Bugs

General

An attempt to remove a sub-scene containing the scene camera will not remove the scene camera anymore.

Label update handling has been ﬁxed. Removing the label attribute went undetected by the scene update. This now gets properly handled and reported.

[Server] Node Manager

A potential hang of the client in case a recruited worker is unexpectedly running a worker process during cluster startup has been ﬁxed.

A potential crash in the membership callback for leaving hosts has been ﬁxed.

Getting the value of an unknown cluster property has been ﬁxed.

If cluster creation failed, the new cluster instance and reserved workers could be leaked in several cases. This has been addressed.

A potential hang when joining the netgroup has been ﬁxed.

A problem with shutting down and restarting a cluster, where the cluster could no longer be joined, has been ﬁxed.

Worker node descriptor::get address no longer returns a port number with the address.

Iray Photoreal

An issue if both caustic sampler and object attributes that affect visibility were used has been ﬁxed.

Sun & sky evaluation issues with large sun sizes have been ﬁxed.

For bitmap textures in base.mdl, the modes base::mono luminance and base::mono average now respect gamma correctly.

The parameter mono source of base::blend color layers is now supported correctly.

I will also note, that there appears to be a bit of variation in how much ram studio uses when it is started up. Ranging from around 274MB to 280MB about for v4.8.0.59 64bit.

(EDIT 08NOV2015 17:54utc) I just noticed 4.9.0.24 still in the "Ready to install" tab of DIM. I'll need to run the test again, My Mistake. I had turned off the install once downloaded button to grab Studio 4.8 32bit for archiving it, and forgot to turn it back on. The ram usage is considerably inconsistent and "All over the place".

"PostgreSQL CMS" is the required part. The Valentina Conversion is to transfer data from the Valentina version, if you were using that version and the database isn't corrupt -- personally I would use "Export User Data" and "Re-Import Metadata" instead.

- Upon install, it imported my metadata but most of my products appeared yellow exclamation mark. I assume this is because I already have them installed in a different library on 4.8. A database reset fixed this.

- changing Iray Render Mode to Interactive actually works for me now without crashing (never did before.)

SHOP

- I don't want the shop to be invasive, and I like the current way it updates its data etc. as detailed in a previous thread, but the window is too small: it'd be much better as a whole pane that is placed in the 3d View space by default (like Render Library is.) It's not like you care about adjusting camera angles of your WIP while shopping, and it'd give a lot more space for content to be displayed. It'd also be more intuitive having its own item in the panes menu as a result.

- I really don't like the way it constantly does new searches as I navigate the Smart Content library. I understand why it does this and why it would be useful, but all it leads to is that I close the shop because I don't want it to keep reloading while I'm not actually in "shopping mode" which means I'm less likely to look at the shop at all. Apart from specific testing I leave it closed at all times because I'm sick of it reloading itself all the time (I have since realised that once the images are loaded they cache, but seeing it happen on 2-3 tabs is enough to make someone get fed up with it, or at least it was for me. Not sure of a solution here.) Then again I also have Smart Content closed at all times so the shop is doubly hidden, reinforcing the give it its own tab argument.

- I've attached some screenshots below of what using the shop is like right now.
1. There is only one big buy button, which goes straight to payment. I don't like this since I shop in batches and want offers and related things when I make a purchase, but I also get that it makes sense as a quick grab an item you see while using the program sort of mentality.
2. The biggest problem is that the images are absolutely tiny and don't have any sort of easy way to make them fullsize. Promo images on the web store already lack a lot of the things people actually want (full body for characters, no makeup/clothing/hair base displays of what you're getting, etc.) but there is no way I would ever buy a product based on what I can see here.
3. I accidentally clicked a blue 1 in the bottom left corner and this happened (also on the initial display, there is the buy button and shop text, then tiny images, then more than double that in nothingness.)

- As it is the shop just isn't complete enough other than for someone wanting to make a sudden rabid purchase of one particular item. Speaking for myself, I would never do that. I look at the current sales going on (the emails are really great for that. I love getting them. They look good and bring good news that makes me actually want to buy) grouped offers, etc. then I decide if/what to buy based on those and related/required products, grouping them up in the shopping cart, double checking prices, adding coupons, etc. before actually buying. I can only speak for me, but I think that is a common way to shop on the site? Also, wishlists. Wishlists are really important. None of these things mentioned are accessible to me in the client store in any way that I've seen.

- Basically, aside from when I was a brand new customer, and glancing at the day's new releases, I almost never go through the actual shop categories anymore (although Daz Store is organised far better than many.) I shop via the sale banners at the top of the page, my wishlist, and the search function (which I really like on Daz Store because of the range of result types it returns.) Again, none of these are available in client so I would always have the shop closed and would use a browser to shop instead. Maybe it'll be helpful for impulse buy new people, but I'll never use it in its current state because the web store is superior in every possible way and I have a computer capable of having Daz Studio and a web browser open at the same time.

- This has been mentioned in a lot of threads lately, but many people feel there is way too much focus on skimpy and honestly just not really useable (for various reasons) clothing. I am absolutely not saying any of it is poor quality or should ever be removed, but people want a larger variety, ie practical male and female outfits (just go look at wilmap's free page if you don't understand what I mean.) There is a huge disparity here not present in many other fields, and I believe it's keeping you from getting more customers. I love sexy outfits too, but it shouldn't be only sexy outfits, or you won't be taken seriously by many people (whether they're right or not to think that way.) Also everyone is bored of skinny white overly tall white models. I've noticed a distinct improvement on these fronts in the last few days on the store and in sales, and I've seen a lot of happy forum posts as a result.

MANAGING CONTENT

- Properly named content makes navigating Smart Content a bit less painful. I still don't like the way it lumps a billion things together, but at least when something is named Arabella_Face_01 it's more helpful than 01_FC1 etc as older ones have. Still no idea if Arabella_Face_01 is iray or 3dl though so Smart Content still isn't worth using for me. I'll stick to Categories.

- Managing Daz Connect installed files is confusing. I now know to look in the Products section of the Content Library for my Connect files, but I only know this because I happened to read it in a forum post. Why not just have a new section called Daz Connect above 'Daz Studio Formats' and 'Poser Formats' ?

- I only just found the tab for displaying only available, updateable content, etc. in Smart Content (below the actual items.) I'm using the lighter of the two themes and it was almost invisible, so I didn't even think options for sorting existed. It's too dark to notice (it shouldn't be glaring but the selected one should be more visible) and maybe at the top?

- Categories are really powerful, and have many of the features many of the complaints about not being able to move physical files want, but they don't seem to be well known about, and their commands can be hard to find or even know they exist. I saw several complaints of categorising databases only for them to get corrupted and have no way to back up to deal with this. Asking on the forums, I later learned there has been a backup option all along. Why did I learn about this in this way? Why didn't those people know they could back up their databases? Where does the database backup even save to? These are questions that should be taught to a new user.

- I really want a completely separate Categories window and manager, and for the Categorise... function to not reset every single time I click it. Dragging and dropping is also really clunky because of folders opening and closing on mouseover while holding mousebutton.

TEACHING USERS

When I started using Daz Studio, the beginner tutorials in the program (especially the interactive ones) and on the web manual were extremely helpful. However once I knew how to place a camera and why I needed to, there was nothing explaining the more complex elements that I was getting into, such as using the many other tools in the program or managing my store bought content. I feel that this is one of the big things that has led to so many managing their things in their own way that is now conflicting so badly. Categories are (mostly) really good right now, but many don't seem to know about them and the commands are a bit spread out in weird ways. If all new users were taught to use them off the bat, you'd have more people managing their content in the same way, making transitions like this much less painful. Or maybe that's overly optimistic. But more guides and documentation beyond beginner things, please.

For example, I know there is a rigging tool and that clothing etc. is fully rigged within Studio. But I have ZERO idea how it works, and there is no Daz information I see on how to do it. The manual is excellent for the basics, and then stops existing and it's onto scouring for whispered rumours and ultra specific user advice to others. This leads many to think they need to go to other programs to achieve many 3d things, and they don't. I closed the animation timeline and never opened it again because there was no tutorial or user guide from Daz encouraging me to try it. That means zero animation related products sold to me. I may only be one customer, but I spent around $100 a week (I don't know if that's a lot or not but it's a huge amount to me) on the store, mostly thanks to sales promotions.

I get the direction of Connect and I like that, but it's clearly in early days and isn't really usable yet. I would also like to see a lot more direction going into wider range of marketing and teaching users. The intro material is fantastic. I found this program so easy to get into. If you think these points aren't relevant, just look at the storm caused by lack of clear explanation/understanding on the initial release of this beta.

I have a Q regarding that IPR with 3delight. I have abandoned that after my first taste with an HD figure that locked my computer up solid for around fifteen minutes while it reprocessed the SSS precompute delay of the shader. Dose the IPR now give my computer at least some of the CPU for the music to keep playing (if nothing else the mouse pointer), or dose it still consume 100% of the computer every time anything is changed on the figure still?

Yes, I'm asking instead of just trying it. Has IPR been tamed a bit with it's resources consumption?

I agree with Ix to an extent, but I don't want a shop button, so an option to close it while keeping the info tab would be nice.

I prefer moving folders into catagories, which is my main gripe with Smart Content right now, the only way to move files from the product library is to first create a folder, name it the same way and move the files into it. This is tedious and a waste of time and very discouraging. It makes me want to get rid of the clould downloads and go back to my Library since it is easier to copy folders into a catagory.

Smart is great in placing all the accessories together like belts and gloves but it does not separate clothing by generation so unless you have a good memory, there will be some trail and error when using content. So far there is great potential with smart but unless it becomes easier to costumize to the user's content, I don't see this going past a novice user. It's something to start with but will outgrow in time as one becomes more confident with managing their own content.

I see a good few mentions of the new built-in shop. How does it compare with the old Poser direct Content Paradise link? I seem to remember no-one had a good word to say about that. What's different now?

Incidentally, I'll never use the built-in shop, for many of the same reasons I never bothered with CP when I still used Poser.

And I just noticed the bit in Ix's post about the shop bypassing multiple-purchase offers, only allowing to buy one thing at a time. My considered opinion of this — a pile of dingo's kidneys. If I want to buy something from the DAZ store, I'll do it the way it should be done, by going online with my browser.

I prefer moving folders into catagories, which is my main gripe with Smart Content right now, the only way to move files from the product library is to first create a folder, name it the same way and move the files into it. This is tedious and a waste of time and very discouraging. It makes me want to get rid of the clould downloads and go back to my Library since it is easier to copy folders into a catagory.

I'm not sure why this doesn't work for you, you should be able to create a category from a Products folder.

You can still minimise the shop now to go to the info tab instead just fine. The shop won't connect or load when it isn't actually open displaying content.

But yeah, Smart Content is pretty much useless for anyone who actually knows about what all the file types do and own multiple generations, etc. It was nice the first day or two I used the program. Getting Connect only content from Smart Content into categories was annoying enough that I gave up, and Products listings don't have the folders organising things anymore so that sucks too. As I stated above, just add a new base level Content Library folder above Daz formats called Daz Connect and give us the files and folders there, or even better, auto generate purchases into categories there that we can rearrange as we like.

I can't really compare to Poser's CP because I thought that was a load of junk when I tested Poser and I thought the site was too. All that happened was that it led me to searching for these mysterious Daz figures like Victoria which were said to be the best, and that was that. I actually like Daz's web store, despite them taking away an option for light and dark layouts everywhere :/ The program store is at least dark, but built for tiny tiny ants who only make single impulse buys, as stated above.

Obviously I expect all of this will change since it's the first implementation of the store, but first impressions are important for many people, and those who think it's useless now might not notice when (if) it's made great.

Daz Connect: the login screen on opening the program is annoying. I can tell it to go away, but then I don't get logged in until I try to do something that requires online. Then the window is back. If I can already tell it to remember my details, could there not be an option to make it not ask me at all? (I do like the manualness of it all, but I should be able to opt in to just being connected as a choice.) If I'm not logged in, I assume I don't get product updates so I'll miss them unless I happen to want to install something I own via the Content tab?

Smart Content:

I've been trying to use only Smart Content for a bit and the lack of generation separation is just so confusing.

e.g. I installed Arabella 7 as a test, then wanted to grab a single hair to test, but ALL of them appear in the library. I get that autofit exists but I'd like to know what was actually designed for that generation.

Also, it's entirely possible to install a character without Essentials of that generation installed, but then you'll be asked to download Essentials, which is a massive file no matter the generation. Not that I don't appreciate all that free content, but I'd really really like to just be able to install the base figure without having to manually search for the specifically correct files in one giant zip and making my own.